Ring in the New

It’s relatively quiet in my office this week. I can count the times my phone has rung on one hand, and—except for the inevitable, automatically generated spam—there have only been a handful of emails. Most offices are closed, and people are either at home with their families, or out of town. And most people probably think I’m at home, which has allowed me time to finally sort through things that have piled up on my desk during these past few extremely busy months.

So why am I blowing my cover and writing this? Well, since the old year is ending and a new year is about to begin, it seems an ideal time to voice a concern about how we parse old and new.

The immediate inspiration for these musings comes from attending the second performance of Tan Dun’s The First Emperor at the Metropolitan Opera on Tuesday night. Before going, I purposefully avoided reading any of the pundits who attended opening night on December 21; they were pretty easy to avoid given the holiday onslaught. So I went in without anyone telling me what I should be thinking, although, as readers here already know, I had already attended the first full cast/orchestra rehearsal.

What I didn’t say at that time was that the performance somehow didn’t connect for me. It was not fair to say anything about it at the time, since indeed it was the first rehearsal. But admittedly, I was expecting to be disappointed at the actual performance. However, on the contrary, I was riveted and, at times, flabbergasted specifically by how it all did connect: elements of Peking opera, the conventions of standard repertoire opera, and postmodern orchestration. But this is not a review; I don’t really believe in reviews.

Why I don’t believe in reviews was further confirmed by the almost unanimous chorus of First Emperor naysayers I caught up with online yesterday. Still, there are comments embedded in the published accounts of the performance that bear careful scrutiny by anyone concerned about new work flourishing:

Audiences want music that holds up—as entertainment—with the best of what was written a century ago. But art must move forward.

Philip Kennicott in Washington Post (December 23, 2006)

The irony of this statement, of course, is that had Tan Dun composed a high modernist score he would have been equally vilified by the critics for being out of touch with audiences and insensitive to operatic conventions.

That all nine performances are essentially sold out is good news for the Met, for contemporary music and for opera over all. My guess is that a large number of the ticket-holders are opera neophytes attracted by the novelty of this project and hoping for a grand theatrical experience.

Anthony Tommasini in The New York Times (December 23, 2006)

The implication here is that most regular opera attendees would not waste their time on a new work and that the people who would don’t know anything about opera.

As for actual statements about the opera itself, the following comment by Manuela Hoelterhoff, published in Bloomberg.com on December 22, 2006, tells me more about the reviewer than the reviewed:

This may be dramatic by the stilted standards of Chinese opera, yet except for the tediously long expository opening scene with a shaman and the master of ceremonies, the piece mostly adheres to poorly absorbed Western traditions.

Granted, a Chinese opera neophyte might find the dramatic exposition of Chinese opera stilted, but wouldn’t someone who has never previously experienced good ole Verdi, Puccini, or Wagner be equally perplexed by how each of these dramatic composers suspends reality, especially folks whose primary to dramatic exposition is the world of film and television? If La traviata, Madama Butterfly, or Tristan und Isolde were brand new works receiving their premieres in New York City in 2006, how do you think they would be received by the media’s appointed arbiters of taste?

But, of course, now that the blogosphere has democratized criticism, we no longer need to limit ourselves to circulated publications to find folks with strong opinions proclaiming their views. You might think that as a result there would be an even wider range of viewpoints out there, but I haven’t found them yet. One thing I did find, however, was…

…the audience is cheering like crazy and it’s making me furious.

Jonathan Ferrantelli on the Wellsung blog (December 21, 2006)

This comment made me stop looking for a while. After all, it’s almost New Year’s Eve, which is time to start cheering like crazy to ring in the new!